The unofficial start of the summer season is traditionally one of the busiest times for format changes. In 2015, not so much.
With so many people on the road traveling, formats usually debut with the population on the move ready to sample new stations. The 2014 Memorial Day Weekend brought eleven changes and three on-going stunts from Tuesday through Monday including moves in New York, San Jose and Richmond. This year just five changes and one stunting prior to its Tuesday launch took place over the holiday weekend.
In asking a few programmers on why they thought this weekend was much slower than normal we heard a few theories ranging from the holiday falling a week earlier than usual to no more format holes to fill to the poor financial showings many of the big groups had in the first quarter. We’re still monitoring a few domain registrations for changes that haven’t taken place yet. Has the significance of making a format change on a holiday weekend simply lost its luster?
For those that missed them here’s the rundown of the changes that did take place this weekend:
5/26: CBS AC “Fresh 102.5” KEZK St. Louis rebrands as “102.5 KEZK“.
5/22: Cumulus CHR “I97.5” KSZR Tucson flipped to Classic Hip-Hop “97.5 The Vibe”
5/22: Standards 1330 WHGM/104.7 W284BE Havre de Grace, MD flipped to Classic Hits “104.7 The Point”
5/22: iHeartMedia Alternative “105.7 The Buzz” WVBZ Greensboro, MD flips to Rock “105.7 Man Up!”
5/21: After closing on their sale of 1550 KDCO/94.1 K231BQ Golden/Denver, CO, “Mile High Sports Radio” is off the air in the market while they station plays an unbranded mix of music.
5/20: Forever Media moved News/Talk 103.1 WRSC-FM State College, PA to 1390 WRSC to give way to the launch of Classic Hits “Happy 103.1”
[alert-announce]Listen to airchecks of some of these changes and more at FormatChange.com[/alert-announce]
FWIW, the only true flip that I know about in Canada during this year’s Victoria Day weekend was CHAY’s.